


It's always been you

by captainhurricane



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 2nd Person, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Sappy Ending, keith pov, series epilogue sort of, they're in their 40s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 14:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14137956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: You love him and he loves you. This is the only truth that matters anymore.





	It's always been you

When you live through a war for a couple of decades, it becomes all you know. It becomes the new normal, your daily life. Wake up, brush your teeth, eat some breakfast and hop into your galactic robotic lion and fly in service of the entire damn universe. Win or lose a few battles, go back to the base or the Castle, have a snack, take a shower, wash away bruises and wounds and pain. Sleep, if you can.

Wake up and do it all over again.

Then the day comes when that routine breaks and there are no enemies to be fought. Your Lion stays silent and still in her hangar, slowly but surely on her way of becoming a relic of something no longer needed.

How do you go on from that?

When war is all you know, and memories of peaceful days are just that, memories, how do you cope, how do you return from the constant warzone, turn your inner switch from on to off, sleep a whole night through.

It helps to not have to do it alone.

­ It had taken you years to truly feel at home with the others- with Shiro, with your Shiro, that’s never been a problem- but when you finally did, they’re all the family you’ve ever needed.

The war had taken years and years away from you, taken away allies and enemies alike. But it brought you closer to your friends, to your Shiro. It brought you back your mother who held you and you held her and she cried and you cried.

She didn’t come back with you to Earth after it’s all said and done, but she promised to call and write and see you again. You wondered if it’s after all because you now know where your father has been laid to rest, long after he left you too. You didn’t blame your ageless mother and you let her go.

All of you, you and Shiro and the others, returned to Earth as galactic heroes. As we should be, Lance had said, grin as bright as the sun. Damn right, you said, agreeing with him, for once.

 But it’s Shiro whose hand you took and it’s Shiro you smiled at. He smiled back. You knew he only came back for you because he too has no one and nothing left on this planet. But this planet is where you both came from and where you wanted to return all along.

The Lions whispered their goodbyes to you and you all parted ways, forever friends, no longer warriors.

You went with Shiro, hand in hand. It’s that hand that you still hold, two decades later. It’s that hand you bring to your lips and kiss in the mornings when both of you have a chance to just lay in bed for a while. It’s that hand that you want in yours always.

The same hand that you put that ring on some years ago.

“What are you thinking?” He asks you certain mornings with a quirked brow and a smile. You love that smile so you tell him so. It’s worth it to see the pink on his cheeks.

“You,” you tell him.

“I think you do have to think about other things too than just me, sweetheart,” Shiro says then and takes your hand in between his. He kisses it, kisses each knuckle and lingers on the silvery wedding band.

This is it. This is how you live without a war, this is how you live when there is peace and the universe has slowly moved on from chaos and destruction. This is how you live in it.

It’s in the way your husband of fifteen years smiles at you in the mornings. It’s in the way he cuddles your cats. It’s in the way your heart swells still with warmth and love when he does your laundry or takes out the trash or holds you after a nightmare.

It’s even in the way he argues about dishwashing or who’s gonna feed the cats when he has work and you have work. It’s even in the way when he gives you the silent treatment after a particularly bad fight.

You make it work because for you, Takashi Shirogane has always been the only one: ever since you were a scrappy furious cadet and he was a kind, proud upperclassman. And now you’re both older, both scarred physically and mentally but you never have to go through it alone.   

Not even when he finally adopts a senior dog and insists on loving it more than you.

If you sneak the dog more treats than him, then well… nobody needs to know but you and the dog. Then again, Shiro does know because there are no secrets between you. There’s no need. You have your own things, he has his own things but in the evening  and in the mornings you always come together.

Catching him when he falls is easy for you because you’ve been doing it for years and years.

Catching you when you fall is easy for him because he loves you enough to always try.

This is how you make it through years of peace after years of war are in the past: you love him and he loves you and you build a life together out of the embers of a galactic war. Because that’s the way it was always meant to be. You saved him and saved him and saved him and saved him and he knows it and holds you like there is nothing in the world more precious for him.

And you know there isn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> @ dw
> 
> pls give me Sheith living together in some shape or form after VLD is done pls i'm begging you   
> platonic or romantic i'd die


End file.
